


Mrs. Irving

by Nightblaze



Category: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/F, Future Fic, aliens never happened yuh yuh yuh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 05:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17319257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightblaze/pseuds/Nightblaze
Summary: Alice had wanted to be a teacher since she was in second grade.-Or, the story about Alice Irving becoming local high school legend, told in the eyes of her students.





	1. Before

**Author's Note:**

> i havent written anything for so long but i hope you enjoy!

Alice had wanted to be a teacher since she was in second grade.

Well, there were only about three jobs anyone wanted to be in second grade. She hadn’t actually realized that was truly the path she wanted until her last two years of high school, when she had the most amazing, hilarious and loveable English teacher. Alice went to school for her teaching license, focusing in English.

Alice stayed with Deb through her college life, for the most part. They had a few hiccups, the stress of being away from each other and heading in very opposite directions for their lives. Still, they persisted.

Deb was the one that purposed, the year after Alice finished college. It was just a quiet night in for Alice’s birthday in October. Deb had a lovestruck look in her eyes as Alice unwrapped a giant box, then the smaller box inside, and the smaller one inside, until she finally reached the ring. Needless to say, it was Alice’s best birthday present.

The two of them lived together in a cheap apartment in Clivesdale, although Alice ended up getting a job at Hatchetfield High. She subbed just about every day, some teacher always getting sick or having a meeting that day. But teaching wasn’t really the best part of the day. It was the students that really made Alice love her job.


	2. Freshman Year

Oliver didn’t think he could walk into school today. Sunday night had been hell, trying to work through the math homework he couldn’t begin to understand. Taking honors math this year wasn’t the right choice for him, but it was too late in the semester to switch out, so Ollie would just have to suffer.

Emily, one of his only friends in the first period math class, happened to be thinking the exact same thing. She dropped her backpack onto the floor beside her desk and immediately asked, “Did Mrs. Klein actually teach what was on that packet?” Oliver grimaced. They’d already had this conversation trying to figure it out last night, but Emily was the type of person who always had to restate her point.

Ollie shrugged. “I don’t think I got any problems right.” Emily groaned and put her head in her hands.

“Why didn’t I drop this class when I had the chance?” she whined. Ollie smiled in sympathy as the bell rang, signaling class was starting. Or was supposed to start.

A few moments passed, and the students began to notice that Mrs. Klein wasn’t in the room. “If a teacher isn’t here in fifteen minutes, we’re allowed to leave,” someone from the back row called out. There wasn’t any response.

Everyone was starting to get antsy after about three minutes, except for Lizzie, Ollie’s only other friend in this class.

Lizzie turned around to Emily and Ollie. “Do you guys want to go to Moe’s after school?” Emily immediately replied positively, but Oliver shook his head.

“My mom needs me to-”

“Hello!” an unfamiliar but cheerful voice chimed from the doorway. “Sorry, everyone, it looks like Mrs. Klein couldn’t make it today.”

“What happened?” asked the singular kid who actually liked the strict math teacher.

“Nobody told me anything, sorry,” said the sub as she wrote her name on the board. Mrs. Irving. She pulled a stack of paper from her bag. “Anyways, my name is Mrs. Irving! I’m pretty new to working here, but I actually was a freshman here before I switched to Clivesdale High.”

“Ew, Clivesdale Cheetahs?” snarked the one sophomore in the class.

Ollie joined the obligatory roasting session of one of Hatchetfield’s rivals. Lizzie laughed and spoke above the clamor, “At least she’s not a fuckin’ Timberwolf!” Her shit-eating grin proved she knew exactly what was going to happen.

The slight murmurs and comments about the Cheetahs became an uproar about the Sycamore Timberwolves.

Mrs. Irving only laughed, dismissing Lizzie’s cursing. “Gosh, don’t get me started.”

Little did Oliver know that this was only the beginning.

***

Emily and Lizzie had English together third period, without Ollie. They converged on their way from German and Health respectively, walking the last part of the way together. It had been several weeks since the math class with Mrs. Irving. They’d gone on winter break about a month after that week and it was their first day back.

English with Mr. Bridges was an entirely different story. The man was relaxed about turning in assignments. Lizzie hadn’t turned a single project in on time or well-done and still managed a B, the highest grade on her report grade. 

Today, however, Mrs. Irving was sitting at Mr. Bridges’ desk.

“Alright, for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Mrs. Irving,” she greeted a moment after the bell rang. “So, I’m sure you’re already tired of hearing it, but how was everyone’s break?”

Lizzie raised her hand, then spoke immediately. “I don’t know about you guys, but New Year’s was insane at Elena’s house.” The classroom buzzed as they sensed unspilled tea. Mrs. Irving let the talking go on.

Emily turned to Lizzie. “What happened at Elena’s party?”

“That’s the best part, I don’t know. Elena just attracts drama.”

As the class quieted, Mrs. Irving leaned back in Mr. Bridges’ chair. “I’ve got a New Years story from when I was a high schooler. Me and my friends-”

“Wait, do we have any work?” someone asked. Everyone groaned.

The young teacher shrugged. “Mr. Bridges didn’t leave any notes or email me at all, actually.”

“Keep going!” Lizzie insisted. She’d heard from Jack who’d heard from Elena herself that Mrs. Irving had some good stories.

“We crashed someone’s party,” she started. “I wasn’t really a partying kid at that time - it was just that someone convinced me to go with them.” Lizzie didn’t miss Mrs. Irving lightly touch her wedding ring or the general neutral pronouns. As they all said these days: oh worm? “To be frank, I don’t actually remember much about the night.” She tapped her water bottle and winked. “But,” she gestured to a small scar on her left eyebrow. “I might have tried to crowd surf. It worked, kind of, for a second. Then I fell and had to get stitches.”

There was a pause as everyone in the room attempted to try and deduce if this was true.

“Anyways, attendance. Elizabeth Abel?”

***

It’s late into the year when Emily had her next encounter with Mrs. Irving. Unfortunately, her fifth bell was honors biology and she didn’t have any of her friends in the class.

“Oh shit! It’s Mrs. Irving!” the girl who sat next to her, Alice, said.

Emily, being herself, never really knew what was going around at school. “What about her?”

Alice had a friend named Will who sat on the other side of Emily. “You don’t know about Mrs. Irving?”

“Didn’t she get her scar from falling off of a stage?” some kid down the row hissed. Emily glanced at Mrs. Irving, who was sitting at her desk, seemingly listening to every whisper she could.

“She once hid in her bathroom for two hours because someone broke into her house!”

“Didn’t that turn out to be her friend, though?”

“She was best friends with my mom when she was younger, I think.”

“But I heard she used to be a stoner!” Alice piped up in response to the last one.

“That’s impossible, Alice!” someone mocked.

Mrs. Irving laughed loudly, drawing silence from the class. “Sorry, sorry, you can keep talking about me. It just didn’t take anywhere near as long as I expected to find someone with my name.”

“Alice! It’s Alice!”

Emily watched in horror as, for the rest of the class, Mrs. Irving was only called by her first name.


	3. Sophomore Year

Oliver’s math class next year was much better than the last. He was taking CP, not honors, and that meant he was coving the same exact things for the first part of the year. And Mr. Todd wasn’t an asshole like Mrs. Klein. Unfortunately, it was also his first period again. The school schedule god, also known as Mrs. McGinnis the guidance counselor, probably just hated him.

Monday morning was objectively the worst part of Ollie’s day. Emily and Lizzie both took honors math this year, so he was very much alone in this class except for a guy named Elijah who he sat with at lunch but largely preferred to not speak with.

As he sat down, early as always, Ollie noticed the one and only Mrs. Irving at Mr. Todd’s desk. She had two boxes of donuts on her desk, unopened. Over the next few minutes, everyone else who trudged into the room immediately noticed the boxes of donuts.

The woman, wearing one of her iconic pink sweaters, started to speak. “So my senior year, a friend and I liked to break into the teachers lounge.” It looked like Lizzie was right, she did tend to touch her wedding ring when she mentioned her friend. “And every Friday, they had donuts in there. We always took one for ourselves and then snuck out of the window. We planned to stage a donut coup, but it never came to be.”

Mrs. Irving opened both boxes, a smile playing on her face. “So, these are for you guys! I know Mondays suck, so indulge yourselves.” There was a cacophony of screeching chairs as Ollie and the rest of the class bolted for the donuts. 

“She’s really the best teacher in the school, right?” Elijah said to Ollie around a mouthful of strawberry-frosted donut.

“She’s certainly something,” Ollie agreed. Lizzie raved about Mrs. Irving at least once a week, and while Emily listened Ollie tended to block it out. “But doesn’t she only ever talk about her high school years?”

Elijah shrugged. “It doesn’t matter too much. The donuts are enough for me.”

***

Lizzie’s U.S. history class was her first bell this year. Mr. Johnson had told the class that he’d be out today during class yesterday, but it still kind of surprised her to see Mrs. Irving instead of the lanky history freak who taught the class. In her sleepy stupor, she didn’t notice that Mrs. Irving was talking quietly on the phone. “Hey, Alice!” Lizzie called, grinning as Mrs. Irving sighed good-naturedly into her severely cracked phone.

“I’ve got to go, love you.” Mrs. Irving quickly said into the phone. The few students who were in the room were either staring into nothing, almost zombified, or blasting music through their earbuds.

“Aren’t teachers, like, not supposed to take phone calls at school?” Lizzie commented as she took her spot in the back of the room, right next to the teacher’s desk but farthest from the whiteboard and projector.

“Yes, but my wife decided to text me that it was an emergency.” Mrs. Irving shook her head, but she was smiling as she watched Lizzie have a face-journey now that her suspicions of the mythical Alice having a wife. “We were out of orange juice.”

“I don’t know, Alice, that seems like an emergency to me.”

“You’re abusing your knowledge of my first name,” was all she said in response. Lizzie shrugged.

“What’s your wife’s name, by the way?” Lizzie started to get her notebook out, faking nonchalance. Lizzie pretended not to see the knowing look on Mrs. Irving’s face.

“Deborah,” the teacher decided to say.

Lizzie laughed slightly, relaxing into her chair. “What’s with the hesitation? Is Deborah fake?”

Mrs. Irving paused for a moment, and for a spooky two seconds Lizzie almost thought she cause her in some kind of wacky lie. “No, I was just considering that you were going to abuse the knowledge of her first name, too.”

“Oh, I totally am.” 

The bell rang, but Lizzie found she couldn’t stop smiling the whole class.

***

The last period of Emily’s day was AP chemistry. Nobody who was in AP chemistry liked it whatsoever, except when Mrs. Greenberg decided it was a lab day and made something explode.

Today was not going to be a lab day, it was going to be a day to work on science fair projects. Since it was an honors course, the entire class was required to participate in the “Science and Innovation Expo.” Mrs. Greenberg was giving them a whole three days to work in class, but the project wasn’t due until late January and she had given it to them in August, so Emily supposed it was fair enough.

The room was already buzzing with conversation, none about the projects, when Emily walked in. The obnoxious bell went off just a few seconds after she made it in the door. It was always a close call for her, coming from two floors up for ninth period women’s choir and having to stop at her locker on the way down.

It was only after Emily sat down and gave Oliver a quick hello that she saw that it was Mrs. Irving in class and not Mrs. Greenberg.

“Oh, it’s Mrs. Irving,” Emily pointed out to Ollie. The boy nodded.

“What did Lizzie say about her at lunch today?”

“To ask her about someone named Deborah’s green activities.” As she removed her laptop from her backpack, Emily laughed. “You ever wonder why Lizzie loves her so much?”

Ollie sighed. Oh, shit, Emily must have talked about this before. “No, I mean, she’s a cool teacher,” Ollie pointed out. “I think you just wonder about Lizzie.” Oliver glanced up from staring at his math homework.. “Sorry, I didn’t actually mean to say that.” Emily couldn’t think of a response. 

She opened her laptop and began to work on her English essay. They had made plans earlier that week to work on the project and it was just about done, so they were both using today as a study hall.

Mrs. Irving was walking around the room, the kind of awkward way subs do when they don’t have anything else to do. She stopped behind Emily and Oliver, immediately making them cease all work they were doing because, well, what else do students do when teachers stand right behind them?

“Oh, you guys are reading Animal Farm?” Mrs. Irving observed. Emily nodded, gesturing to the book on her desk. “My wife, Deborah, loves that book.”

“Really? I think it’s just weird,” Ollie scoffed. “I know it’s supposed to be social commentary, but it’s just weird.” Mrs. Irving only shrugged in response.

Emily ended up doing next to no work on the essay. She could only think about how Mrs. Irving had a wife.


End file.
